Summary

This chapter provided you with an in-depth introduction to the ReportViewer control and the newest application paradigm exposed by Visual Studio. You saw that while the drag-and-drop techniques make Data Source generation easy, they aren't necessary in every case and sometimes don't afford the flexibility of hand-rolled queries. I showed you how to create your own DataTable and bind it to the ReportViewer LocalReport instance, as well as a variety of ways to launch your custom reports. This chapter should have made it clear that while the ReportViewer control exposes additional application report-generation alternatives, it comes at a price. With the ReportViewer control, you're in charge of far more functionality that has to be hard-coded and supported. The Reporting Services approach is less flexible with fewer options but makes it far easier for you and your team to build, deploy and maintain reports. If you need a more in-depth treatment of Reporting Services, be sure to read our book on SQL Server Reporting Servicesthis version of Reporting Services was developed for the SQL Server 2005 version, so the book really documents most of the current version. Sure, there are some improvements in the 2005 version, but I think you'll find that our book covers (or predicts) most of those enhancements.